Mary Higgins Clark doesn't have quite the knack for characterization that my greatest favourites (James, Robinson) do, and her dialogue often feels a bit stilted to me, but she atones for it in large part by nice, clear structures. In this case, she sets up a couple of straw men for her serial killer, carefully dropping clanging hints suggesting one or the other in the final sentence of each cliff-hanger chapter. They are suitably unsympathetic, too. I was interested to see that although this book was published in 1991, long before the catchphrases of serial killer profiling became a common part of the cultural soup through various TV shows, she's referencing the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit and the trophy-hunting behaviour of the "classic" sexual predator - and making the latter an integral part of her plot. The title's phrasing nicely suggests the personal ads which are also a part of the plot; though if she were writing this novel today, no doubt Higgins Clark would have had her characters write and answer them on the internet rather than through newspapers and the mail.